Sunday, December 31, 2017

The Washington Times
published my review of James Lee Burke’s Robicheaux.

Dave Robicheaux, James Lee
Burke’s troubled, flawed and heroic character, first appeared in the 1987 crime
novel “Neon Rain.” The Cajun, semi-retired New Iberia, Louisiana, sheriff’s
detective, a Vietnam veteran, former New Orleans homicide detective and struggling
alcoholic, has throughout the series of novels seen more than one man’s share
of violence and tragedy.

In “Robicheaux” Mr. Burke
brings back his popular character to face off against his usual suspects;
crooked cops, gangsters, corrupt politicians, psychotic killers, and heartless
and greedy patricians.

Once again, Dave Robicheaux
is both aided and hampered by Clete Purcel, his former New Orleans homicide
partner and fellow Vietnam veteran. Purcel, a private detective, is a big and
heavy man who drinks and eats to excess. Wearing a porkpie hat over his short
blond hair and colorful Hawaiian shirts over his girth, he might appear comical
to a casual observer, but Purcel is a dangerous, one-man wrecking crew.

Haunted by his abusive
father, war memories and his violent past on both sides of the law, Purcel is
self-destructive and prone to violence. But he also has a strong sense of
justice and truly cares about crime victims and the oppressed. He is also loyal
and protective of his few friends, Dave Robicheaux being one of them.

“The man I came to see was Fat Tony Nemo, also
known as Tony the Nose, Tony Squid, or Tony Nine Ball, the latter not because
he was a pool shark but because he packed a nine ball into a bartender’s mouth
with the butt of a pool cue. Of course, that was during his earlier
incarnation, when he was a collector for Didoni Giacano and the two of them
used to drive around New Orleans in Didi’s Caddy convertible, terrifying
whoever couldn’t make the weekly vig, a bloodstained baseball bat propped up in
the backseat,” Robicheaux, the narrator, informs us in the beginning of the
novel. “Currently, Fat Tony was involved in politics and narcotics and porn and
casinos and Hollywood movies and the concrete business.”

… Robicheaux is a provocative
and powerful crime novel; gritty, atmospheric and mystical.

Saturday, December 30, 2017

Paula McMahon at
sun-sentinel.com offers a piece on the reputed Philadelphia Cosa Nostra crime family boss,
Joseph Merlino (seen in the above photo), who is going to trial in New York on racketeering charges.

Reputed Mafia boss Joseph
“Skinny Joey” Merlino has survived more than 25 attempts on his life and been
cleared of the most serious charges — three murder raps — leveled against him
over the years.

When the flamboyant
Philadelphia native, who now lives in Boca Raton, goes on trial next month, he
hopes to beat the feds as they try to put him back in prison for much of the
rest of his life.

The current case began last
year when the feds arrested 46 men up and down the East Coast on charges they
said read like “an old-school Mafia novel.” The men were accused of being part
of an organized crime network that involved the Genovese, Gambino, Lucchese,
Bonanno and Philadelphia major crime families. Their business included
gambling, selling tax-free cigarettes and collecting illegal debts, the feds
say.

Merlino, 55, and Eugene
“Rooster” Onofrio, 75, of East Haven, Conn., are the only two who are going to
trial. Merlino is free on a $5 million bond and his trial starts Jan. 16 in
federal court in Manhattan.

He is considered a “mob star”
by some because he courted media attention, regularly marched in the
Philadelphia Mummers parade and made a holiday tradition of distributing
turkeys to needy families.

Mob crackdown shows South
Florida is still home for organized crime, feds say

It’s no surprise that Merlino
is going to trial, said David Fritchey, a retired federal prosecutor and former
chief of organized crime for the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Philadelphia, who
helped send Merlino to prison in the past.

“That’s his personality. He’s
gone to trial before and he’s dodged some legal bullets – he’s been hit but not
as mortally as he could have been,” said Fritchey. “He’s the kind of guy who
takes his chances.”

“But there’s a cost that
comes with that kind of in-your-face criminality. It attracts the attention of
law enforcement,” he said.

Fritchey said he anticipates
one of the most interesting aspects of the upcoming trial will be seeing how a
Manhattan jury reacts to Merlino. Though Merlino is something of a celebrity in
Philadelphia and South Florida, he’s not so well known in New York City, the
international capital of mob activity.

Friday, December 29, 2017

I'm a huge fan of Bob Hope, so I look forward to watching tonight's PBS profile of the late, great comedian, actor and performer on their American Masters series.

Stephanie
Nolasco at Fox News interviewed his daughter about this life and his
entertaining the troops.

From vaudeville to Hollywood,
Bob Hope conquered it all as a beloved showman — but his greatest achievement
was entertaining the troops.

At the time of his death in
2003 at age 100, the New York Times reported the film, TV and stage star
performed nearly all of his 400 radio programs at military bases and embarked
on annual tours where he delighted American servicemen with his sidesplitting
monologues. Hope even took time to befriend weary soldiers and, as his name
implies, deliver hope to those fighting for their country.

His eight-decade career is
the subject of a new PBS documentary, titled “American Masters: This is Bob
Hope…,” which explores his contributions as a comedian, actor and proud
patriot. And the unabridged director’s cut features over 35 minutes of footage
just for fans.

Fox News spoke with his
daughter Linda about growing up with Hope.

Fox News: What are some of
your favorite memories involving your dad?

Linda Hope: The fun of his
homecomings. When he would go away usually for several weeks at a time and
finally come home, we anticipated it for days. Particularly right around the
holidays because my mother had a rule that when dad was away at Christmas, we
would only be able to open just a few presents on Christmas Day.

Then we would save the rest
of our gifts so we can have a Christmas with dad. It was always much more fun
that way. We basically had two Christmases…. It was always a great time with
wonderful food. He loved roast lamb. We actually used to have that at least
every other week, up to once a week. He loved it so much. And lemon meringue
pie, he loved. Those were two things his mother used to make for him when he
was growing up.

Fox News: When did his
passion for entertaining the troops begin?

Hope: It started back before
we had gotten into the Second World War and my dad was doing his radio
broadcast. He had moved out to Los Angeles from New York. He was doing his show
out of the NBC studio in Los Angeles. The troops were starting to build up a
little bit. There was a sense that war was eminent. Roosevelt had tried to keep
us out of the war for so long, but finally the writing was on the wall. Hitler
was gobbling up all of Europe and a lot of young men were signing up. A lot of
these bases around Los Angeles were filled with young men.

It turns out one of dad’s
writers had a brother who was stationed in March Field in Riverside,
California. He said, “Why don’t you think about bringing your show out here?
There’s lots of guys and I know they would love to see you.” So he did that. He
couldn’t believe the number of people in the audience because in a studio
audience, you get 100-150 at most. But here, he had thousands of guys that were
yelling and screaming. He loved the sound of laughter, clapping and people
having fun. And I think he grew addicted to that over the years. He needed to
be out there with those guys and make them laugh.

Fox News: Did he meet with
the troops after his performances?

Hope: He certainly did. When
he would go to different bases, he would always have a meal with them, see if
they were exercising or take part in whatever it was they were doing. He took
it all very seriously. It was very important for him to spend one-on-one time
with the different troops.

Fox News: How did Bob Hope
give back to veterans?

Hope: He would go to the
hospitals all the time and just show up. Sometimes we would say, “Where did dad
go?” And my mom would go, “Oh, he went to the VA hospital in Los Angeles to
spend a few hours with the guys.” He would also do that if he was traveling
someplace and there was a VA hospital there. He would make a visit and spend
time with the different men while going through the different wards.

You can read the rest of the
interview and watch a trailer for tonight’s show on Bob Hope via the below
link:

Note: One of my life’s
regrets was not seeing the Bob Hope Vietnam Christmas show in December of 1970.

I was
an 18-year-old sailor stationed aboard the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk. We
saw photos of Bob Hope's earlier shows aboard the Kitty Hawk and the rumor was
that Hope would perform his show aboard our flight deck as the carrier lay anchored in
Da Nang harbor.

But it was not to be.

We did not
see Hope or those beautiful girls that he always brought with him. When Bob Hope performed his
Christmas show in South Vietnam that year, the Kitty Hawk was way up north, off
the coast of North Vietnam, giving a good pounding to the Communists.

We missed the Christmas show, but our combat air sorties saved countless American and South Vietnamese lives that year.

I later watched the TV show about the 1970 show and I bought and read Bob Hope’s book about his Vietnam shows,
Five Women I Love. The book is still part of my library.

Thursday, December 28, 2017

Victor Davis Hanson offers his
take on the Darkest Hour film and what the world owes the late Winston
Churchill in the Washington Times.

The new film “Darkest Hour”
offers the diplomatic side to the recent action movie “Dunkirk.”

The story unfolds with the
drama of British Prime Minister Winston Churchill assuming power during the
Nazi invasion of France in May 1940. Churchill’s predecessor, the sickly
Neville Chamberlain, had lost confidence of the English people and the British
government. His appeasement of Adolf Hitler and the disastrous first nine
months of World War II seemed to have all but lost Britain the war.

Churchill was asked to become
prime minister on the very day that Hitler invaded France, Belgium and the
Netherlands. The armies of all three democracies — together larger than
Germany’s invading forces — collapsed within days or a few weeks.

About a third of a million
British soldiers stranded in a doomed France were miraculously saved by
Churchill’s bold decision to risk evacuating them by sea from Dunkirk, France,
where most of what was left of the British Expeditionary Force had retreated.

Churchill’s greatest problem
was not just saving the British army, but confronting the reality that with the
German conquest of Europe, the British Empire now had no allies.

The Soviet Union had all but
joined Hitler’s Germany under their infamous non-aggression pact of August
1939.

The United States was
determined at all costs to remain neutral. Just how neutral is emphasized in
“Darkest Hour” by Churchill’s sad phone call with U.S. President Franklin D.
Roosevelt. FDR cleverly assures Churchill that in theory he wants to help while
in fact he can do nothing.

Within days of Churchill
taking office, all of what is now the European Union either would be in
Hitler’s hands or could be considered pro-Nazi “neutral.”

“Darkest Hour” gets its title
from the understandable depression that had spread throughout the British
government. Members of Churchill’s new War Cabinet wanted to sue for peace.
Chamberlain and senior conservative politician Edward Wood both considered
Churchill unhinged for believing Britain could survive.

Both appeasers dreamed that
thuggish Italian dictator Benito Mussolini might be persuaded to beg Hitler to
call off his planned invasion of Great Britain. They dreamed Mussolini could
save a shred of English dignity through an arranged British surrender.

Not Churchill.

In one of the few historical
lapses in an otherwise superb film, Churchill is wrongly portrayed as seriously
conflicted and about to consider the deal with Mussolini — until he takes a
subway ride and rediscovers the defiance of the average Londoner. The subway
scene is pure fantasy.

… Churchill led the only
major nation to have fought Hitler alone. Only Britain fought from the first
day to the last of World War II. It alone entered the war without attacking a
country or being attacked, but simply on the principle of helping an
independent Poland.

The world as we know it today
owes its second chance to Winston Churchill and the United Kingdom. Without
them, civilization would have been lost in the darkest hours of May 1940.

Seth Lipsky at that other
Post – the New York Post – offers his take on the Steven Spielberg film The
Post, a film about the liberal, anti-war Washington Post that published “The
Pentagon Papers,” which documented the government’s lies about the Vietnam War.

Ironically, most of the lies
were told by the liberal-Democrat Kennedy and Johnson administrations.

‘Democracy dies in darkness”
is the new motto of The Washington Post. It adopted the slogan amid the
campaign of the liberal press to topple President Trump.

Steven Spielberg’s new movie
about The Washington Post is a reminder — however unintended — of something
else. Sometimes democracy dies in the full glare of the press.

That’s what happened in
Vietnam. And the film, “The Post,” takes on a special irony today, as a press
full of righteous indignation seeks to overturn an American election.

Spielberg’s epic is about
events that took place in 1971. That’s when the WaPo published the secret
history of the Vietnam War known as the Pentagon Papers.

The history had been
assembled on orders of LBJ’s secretary of defense, Robert McNamara. A security
analyst, Daniel Ellsberg, who’d turned against the war, leaked the documents to
The New York Times.

The papers showed that
America’s leaders sometimes lied. About, say, the events in the Tonkin Gulf
that led Congress to authorize the Vietnam War. Or about whether we could win.

The Times started publishing
the papers in June 1971 but was stopped by a federal judge. Ellsberg then gave
boxes of the papers to The Washington Post. All eyes then fell on the paper’s
owner, Katharine Graham.

Played by Meryl Streep, the
doughty doyenne is torn between two factions. On one side are her bankers, who
are trying to raise capital for the paper; on the other, her famed editor, Ben
Bradlee, played by Tom Hanks.

“What are you going to do, Mrs. Graham?” Bradlee
asks her.

The real drama, though, was
the war. Bradlee is up on his high horse. “The way they lied — those days have
to be over,” the editor tells Mrs. Graham.

Fair enough. It’s not my
intention to fault either of them.

Yet this movie deals with
only some of the lies about Vietnam. Inexcusable as they were, the lies told by
the Americans were relatively small beer.

It was our Communist enemies
who told the big lie — that war was a struggle for liberation by Vietnam’s
noble comrades, who took on the Americans with pitchforks. What hooey.

The truth is that the war was
a conquest of free South Vietnam by a well-armed, Soviet-backed regime in the
north. At the end, the enemy emerged from the jungles with tanks and
surface-to-air missiles.

The Pentagon Papers disclosed
that our own leaders, in effect, refused to heed evidence that we would lose
the war — and sent our troops anyway. “The Post” seems to buy into this theory.
Yet it wasn’t sending troops that turned out to be the error.

Rather, it was assuming we
couldn’t win. On the ground in Vietnam, our GIs did just that. In the most
famous battle, Tet in 1968, our soldiers trounced the Communists. The cause of
free Vietnam was betrayed in the US Congress, which had been turned by the
anti-war movement.

… Let President Trump — and
his critics — remember: When Congress cut off Vietnam, it wasn’t about saving
our GIs. They’d long since been withdrawn.

No, the decision by Congress
was to retreat in the face of Soviet Communism. It was about abandoning the
hope of free Vietnam itself.

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Although the Christmas season often prompts us to share our good fortunes with the less fortunate, one should be wary of the crooks out there who take advantage of our generosity.

The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) offers the below piece to help you avoid bogus, crooked scams:

When you give to a charity,
you’re giving because you care and want to help — and you want to be sure your
money actually gets to those you’re trying to help. But scammers who pretend to
be a charity try to get to your wallet. So consider these tips before you give:

Rule out anyone who asks you
to send cash, pay with a gift card, or wire money.

Confirm the exact name of the
charity and do some research, especially when donating for the first time.
Search for the name of the charity online — plus the word “complaint” or
“scam.” That’s one way to learn about a charity’s reputation.

Give to charities you know
and trust, with a proven track record. Before you give to any charity, check
them out with the Better Business Bureau's (BBB) Wise Giving Alliance, Charity
Navigator, Charity Watch, or GuideStar.

Be wary of charities that
seem to pop up overnight in connection with a natural disaster or other
tragedy.

Don’t assume that pleas for
help on crowdfunding sites or social media are legitimate. Real victims’
pictures and stories can easily be misused to con you.

Before you text to donate,
confirm the number on the charity’s website.

Never click on links or open
attachments in e-mails, even if they appear to be from a charity. You could
unknowingly install malware on your computer or be taken to a look-alike
website run by scammers.

For more information, visit
ftc.gov/charity. If you think you’ve spotted a charity scam, tell us at
ftc.gov/complaint.

Monday, December 25, 2017

Scott S. Powell at the
Washington Times offers a piece on the joy of the savior’s birth.

For Christians, Christmas is
a unique time of joy associated with the birth of the savior Jesus, whose life,
death and resurrection makes possible a personal and intimate relationship with
God. Jesus was born a Jew, and his teachings were built on the foundation of
the Torah and the Old Testament. And so it is that Christians and Jews have
much in common and share a natural mutual affinity.

Christians and Jews have both
faced persecution throughout history, and hostility is again intensifying. And
that persecution comes not just from radical Islamists, but also from secular
progressives who now dominate Western culture.

Various towering intellectuals
even wish that Christ had never been born. Karl Marx and Friedrich Nietzsche,
who separately inspired and influenced the rise of murderous totalitarian
regimes in Russia and Germany both condemned Christianity and religion in
general. For Marx, “religion [was] the opium of the people.” Nietzsche said
Christianity was “the greatest of all imaginable corruptions.”

“It’s a Wonderful Life” is an
American film classic enjoyed by more during the Christmas season today than
when it first came out in 1946. Directed by the legendary Frank Capra, the film
is an otherworldly story revolving around a main character played by Jimmy
Stewart in a narrative showing what life would have been like if he had never
been born. Similarly, since Capra’s collective cinematographic works exhibit a
profoundly Christian vision, it’s worth extrapolating on how history and the
present would be different if Christ had never been born.

History shows that the
Christian Church has brought about more changes for the advancement and benefit
of people than any other force or movement. Nonbelieving secular-minded people
might be surprised by the myriad achievements by committed Christians —
progressive accomplishments that they too celebrate.

Before Christ, human life was
cheap and expendable all over the world. In the Americas, the Near East,
Africa, the Middle East and the Far East child sacrifice was a common
phenomenon. Babies, particularly females — who were considered inferior — were
regularly abandoned. Author George Grant points out: “Before the explosive and
penetrating growth of medieval Christian influence, the primordial evils of
abortion, infanticide, abandonment, and exposure were a normal part of everyday
life ” That changed in the West with the 6th century Christian Byzantine Roman
Emperor Justinian whose Law Code declared child abandonment and abortion a
crime.

… Suffice it to say that life
both at home and around the world would no doubt be qualitatively worse today
if Christ had never been born and Christianity had not become the greatest
spiritual force ever to advance the care and development of people. Indeed,
there is reason to sing “Joy to the World.”

Sunday, December 24, 2017

The New York Post Editorial Board offers
a piece on Clement Moore, the author of the world-famous poem, Twas the Night Before
Christmas.

Born in New York City in
1779, Clement Clarke Moore became a noted lecturer and writer. Yet his life
would merit little more than a footnote in New York’s history, except for the
one poem for which he is remembered. Written for his children in 1822, it was
first published (anonymously) in the Troy Sentinel the next year. The poem, of
course, was “A Visit From St. Nicholas” (“The Night Before Christmas”).

You can read the rest of the
piece and the famous poem via the below link:

I have always associated the poem
with the Mabel Beaton Marionettes, whose performance I saw as a young child on TV. Alexander Scourby portrayed Moore and read the poem. I’ve shown the old
broadcast to my children and later to my grandchildren.

Saturday, December 23, 2017

The U.S. Navy released a
photo of Lt. Larry Young, dressed as Santa, as he signals an F/A-18 E Super
Hornet on the flight deck of the aircraft carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN
71).

The Super Hornets are assigned
to the Stingers of Strike Fighter Attack Squadron (VFA) 113

Theodore Roosevelt and its
carrier strike group are deployed to the U.S. 5th Fleet area of operations in
support of maritime security operations to reassure allies and partners and
preserve the freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce in the region.

The above photo was taken by
Mass Communication Specialist 3rd Class Victoria Foley.

Friday, December 22, 2017

Guy Taylor and Dan Boylan at
the Washington Times offers a piece on the Obama administration’s manipulation of classified information for political gain.

They wanted him dead.

For years, a clandestine U.S.
intelligence team had tracked a man they knew was high in the leadership of al
Qaeda — an operative some believed had a hand in plotting the gruesome 2009
suicide attack in Afghanistan that killed seven CIA officers.

Their pursuit was personal,
and by early 2014, according to a source directly involved in the operation,
the agency had the target under tight drone surveillance. “We literally had a
bead on this guy’s head and just needed authorization from Washington to pull the
trigger,” said the source.

Then something unexpected
happened. While agents waited for the green light, the al Qaeda operative’s
name, as well as information about the CIA’s classified surveillance and plan
to kill him in Pakistan, suddenly appeared in the U.S. press.

Abdullah al-Shami, it turned
out, was an American citizen, and President Obama and his national security
advisers were torn over whether the benefits of killing him would outweigh the
political and civil liberties backlash that was sure to follow.

In interviews with several
current and former officials, the al-Shami case was cited as an example of what
critics say was the Obama White House’s troublesome tendency to mishandle some
of the nation’s most delicate intelligence — especially regarding the Middle
East — by leaking classified information in an attempt to sway public opinion
on sensitive matters.

By the end of Mr. Obama’s
second term, according to sources who spoke anonymously with The Washington
Times, the practices of leaking, ignoring and twisting intelligence for
political gain were ingrained in how the administration conducted national
security policy.

Those criticisms have
resurfaced in the debate over whether overall intelligence fumbling by the
Obama White House in its final months may have amplified the damage wrought by
suspected Russian meddling in the U.S. presidential election last year.

Attorney General Jeff
Sessions today directed a review of the handling of Project Cassandra, a law
enforcement initiative targeting Hezbollah’s drug trafficking and related
operations in the United States and abroad, to evaluate allegations that
certain matters were not properly prosecuted and to ensure all matters are
appropriately handled.

“Protecting our citizens from
terrorist organizations and combatting the devastating drug crisis gripping our
nation are two of the Justice Department’s top priorities,” said Attorney
General Sessions. “Operations designed to investigate and prosecute terrorist
organizations that are also fueling that drug crisis must be paramount in this
administration. The DEA has worked
tirelessly on this front. I am committed to giving our hard working and
dedicated DEA agents all the tools that they need to allow them to shut down
these drug rings.

“While I am hopeful that
there were no barriers constructed by the last administration to allowing DEA
agents to fully bring all appropriate cases under Project Cassandra, this is a
significant issue for the protection of Americans. We will review these matters
and give full support to investigations of violent drug trafficking
organizations

“The Department of Justice is
absolutely committed to investigating and prosecuting international drug
trafficking organizations and with the assistance of our DEA and FBI agents we
will leave no stone unturned as we work to making America safer.”

Thursday, December 21, 2017

As History.com notes, on this
day in 1975 the terrorist known as Carlos the Jackal (seen in the above and below photos) led a raid on OPEC.

In Vienna, Austria, Carlos
the Jackal leads a raid on a meeting of oil ministers from the Organization of
Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC). German and Arab terrorists stormed in
with machine guns, killed three people, and took 63 people hostage, including
11 OPEC ministers. Calling his group the “Arm of the Arab Revolution,” Carlos
demanded that an anti-Israeli political statement be broadcast over radio, and
that a bus and jet be provided for the terrorists and their hostages. Austrian
authorities complied, and all the hostages were released in Algeria unharmed.

Glen Burke, 57, of Las Vegas,
pleaded guilty to contempt and conspiracy charges arising from his operation of
two predatory schemes that defrauded thousands of victims, many of whom were
elderly, out of more than $20 million.
Burke conducted those fraudulent campaigns in violation of a 1998 court
order obtained by the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) permanently banning him
from telemarketing and making misrepresentations to consumers. A co-defendant, Michael Rossi, 52, also of
Las Vegas, also pleaded guilty in connection with one of Burke’s schemes.

“The Department of Justice is
determined to punish the perpetrators of fraudulent schemes that exploit
consumers, especially those that target the elderly or vulnerable,” said Acting
Assistant Attorney General Chad Readler of the Justice Department’s Civil
Division. “We will work with our
partners at the FTC and the U.S. Postal Inspection Service to eradicate schemes
that harm the elderly wherever we find them.”

Burke pleaded guilty to
contempt for violating the court order prohibiting him from making
misrepresentations to consumers. That
charge stemmed from Burke running a mass-mailing operation that misled
consumers into believing that they had won large cash prizes, often millions of
dollars. Burke specifically mailed consumers solicitations that used fake names
and, in many cases, looked like they came from law firms or financial
institutions, advising consumers to pay a fee – usually $20 to $30 –to claim
their promised winnings. Once consumers
paid, however, Burke never sent any consumer a promised prize.

Burke, along with Rossi, also
pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit mail and wire fraud for running a
fraudulent telemarketing operation.
Telemarketers working for Burke and Rossi falsely told victims that they
had won one of five valuable prizes, typically: a Chevy Camaro; a Boston Whaler
boat; a diamond-and-sapphire bracelet; $3,000 cash; or a cruise that could be
exchanged for $2,300. To claim the prize,
consumers were told to pay hundreds, or in some cases thousands, of
dollars. Once they paid, victims
received a nearly worthless piece of costume jewelry or nothing at all.

Sentencing is scheduled on
March 12, 2018. Under the contempt
statute, Burke could be sentenced to any term of imprisonment and fine. Under the conspiracy statute, Burke and Rossi
face a potential maximum sentence of 20 years in prison and a $250,000
fine. The court has the discretion to
impose a lower sentence.

Principal Deputy Assistant
Attorney General Readler commended the investigative efforts of the U.S. Postal
Inspection Service and thanked the FTC for its valuable assistance. The case was prosecuted by Trial Attorneys
Timothy Finley and Daniel Zytnick of the Consumer Protection Branch of the
Department of Justice’s Civil Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Nicholas
Dickinson of the District of Nevada.

Veteran journalist and author
Joseph Goulden offers a negative review of Jefferson Morley's The Ghost: The Secret Life CIA Spymaster James Jesus Angleton in the Washington Times..

As a holiday gift, permit me
to save you 28 bucks and however much time you might waste on the sorriest
excuse for an investigative book that has ever crossed this desk.

Jefferson Morley sets out to
prove that James J. Angleton (seen in the below photo), the longtime — and controversial — head of
counterintelligence for the Central Intelligence Agency — was guilty of a
medley of sins, including complicity in the murder of President Kennedy.

His “research” consists
chiefly of sweeping up every bit of anti-Angleton dung he could in previous
books. The more damning the allegation — and the more ridiculous — the better.

One must blink at some of Mr.
Morley’s outlandish claims. An example: that Angleton had a homosexual
relationship with Kim Philby (seen in the below photo), the British intelligence officer who also spied
for the Soviet Union.

To be sure, the two men knew
one another: Angleton was Philby’s liaison for CIA when the latter was assigned
to Washington. They had many a chat over a bottle and lunch.

Mr. Morley’s evidence? A
comment made by another officer to another author of another book. No substance
is visible, just a suspicion. No matter; such is enough for the likes of a
“historian” such as Mr. Morley.

To be sure, Philby’s
treachery damaged Angleton. He spent his last years searching for “moles” in
the CIA, an ill-guided effort that smeared many innocent people. He eventually
was fired.

But Mr. Morley has little
favorable to say about a career that began in the OSS and had a number of high
spots. Brief mention is made of his acquisition of the famed “Stalin speech” in
which successor Nikita Khrushchev shook communism to its core.

Why such a book? Mr. Morley
is prominent in a claque of deniers who have spent decades trying to prove that
someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald (seen in the below photo) killed Kennedy.

Their campaign even reaches
the White House. Donald Trump’s intimate friend Roger Stone published a book in
2014 blaming Lyndon Johnson for the murder.

But the main target has been
— and will be for eternity, it appears — the Central Intelligence Agency.

For the media, CIA is an easy
target. Journalists love writing about “CIA murder plots” against foreign
leaders, ignoring the fact that orders came from the White House.

Too, a deceased target can do
nothing to rebut outlandish lies. For that matter, even living officers have
trouble gaining redress from courts that hold them to be “public figures.”

Enter the deniers and their
politics. A strong element among the deniers, like Mr. Morley, are on the
far-left of the political spectrum. Hence, they are incapable of fingering a
leftist for the most outrageous crime in American history.

Thus their need for a
scapegoat, and the utility of Angleton. As Mr. Morley writes, carefully casting
his accusation in the form of a question, “Was Angleton running Oswald as part
of a plot to assassinate President Kennedy? He certainly had the knowledge and
ability to do so.”

Tuesday, December 19, 2017

Jonathan Schancer at the New
York Post offers a piece on how President Trump can repair the damage the Obama
administration caused by derailing a major DEA operation so they could have their
Iran nuclear deal.

The Obama White House
systematically dismantled a top-secret government initiative called Project
Cassandra, which was designed to target Hezbollah’s $1 billion in annual drug
proceeds. The gripping story, by Politico’s Josh Meyer, lays bare the details
of the Lebanese terrorist group’s cocaine and crime schemes, and suggests Obama
allowed the activities to continue so as to not upset Iran, Hezbollah’s patron,
amidst nuclear negotiations.

Put aside for a moment that
Obama may have provided a glide path to a terror group’s drug activities so he
could pursue a deeply flawed nuclear deal that only paused Iran’s march to the
bomb, yet yielded this state sponsor of terrorism some $150 billion. We’re now
faced with the urgent challenge of trying to rebuild a government bureaucracy
that was gutted.

Here’s what needs to happen.

First, President Trump has
yet to choose a new chief for the Drug Enforcement Administration. This is an
urgent need. And as my colleague Emanuele Ottolenghi noted last month in The
Hill, the new pick must appreciate “the growing convergence between transnational
organized crime and terrorist groups like Hezbollah.”

Once the right person is in
place, we need to revitalize the agency. Yes, that means more money and
jumpstarting the interagency task force that fights narco-terrorism abroad.

But perhaps more important,
we need to clarify the DEA’s mission. This crucial component of the bureaucracy
needs to focus less on domestic gangs (let law enforcement do that) and get
back to the business of fighting our drug wars abroad — where they can actually
be won.

From there, the Treasury
Department needs to swing into action. Hezbollah is already sanctioned under
our terrorism program. But it must be named as a Transnational Criminal
Organization and slapped with a Kingpin Act designation. This will give our
economic-warfare fighters additional tools to target the group for its drug and
other criminal enterprises.

Josh Meyer at POLITICO offers
a piece on how the Obama administration killed a major DEA operation against
the Hezbollah terrorist group, who are major drug traffickers, so Obama could
get his Iran nuclear deal (and to his mind, his august place in history).

In its determination to
secure a nuclear deal with Iran, the Obama administration derailed an ambitious
law enforcement campaign targeting drug trafficking by the Iranian-backed
terrorist group Hezbollah, even as it was funneling cocaine into the United
States, according to a POLITICO investigation.

The campaign, dubbed Project
Cassandra, was launched in 2008 after the Drug Enforcement Administration
amassed evidence that Hezbollah had transformed itself from a Middle
East-focused military and political organization into an international crime
syndicate that some investigators believed was collecting $1 billion a year
from drug and weapons trafficking, money laundering and other criminal
activities.

Over the next eight years,
agents working out of a top-secret DEA facility in Chantilly, Virginia, used
wiretaps, undercover operations and informants to map Hezbollah’s illicit
networks, with the help of 30 U.S. and foreign security agencies.

They followed cocaine
shipments, some from Latin America to West Africa and on to Europe and the
Middle East, and others through Venezuela and Mexico to the United States. They
tracked the river of dirty cash as it was laundered by, among other tactics,
buying American used cars and shipping them to Africa. And with the help of
some key cooperating witnesses, the agents traced the conspiracy, they
believed, to the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

They followed cocaine
shipments, tracked a river of dirty cash, and traced what they believed to be
the innermost circle of Hezbollah and its state sponsors in Iran.

But as Project Cassandra
reached higher into the hierarchy of the conspiracy, Obama administration
officials threw an increasingly insurmountable series of roadblocks in its way,
according to interviews with dozens of participants who in many cases spoke for
the first time about events shrouded in secrecy, and a review of government
documents and court records. When Project Cassandra leaders sought approval for
some significant investigations, prosecutions, arrests and financial sanctions,
officials at the Justice and Treasury departments delayed, hindered or rejected
their requests.

The Justice Department
declined requests by Project Cassandra and other authorities to file criminal
charges against major players such as Hezbollah’s high-profile envoy to Iran, a
Lebanese bank that allegedly laundered billions in alleged drug profits, and a
central player in a U.S.-based cell of the Iranian paramilitary Quds force. And
the State Department rejected requests to lure high-value targets to countries
where they could be arrested.

The money, allegedly
laundered through the Lebanese Canadian Bank and two exchange houses, involved
approximately 30 U.S. car buyers.

“This was a policy decision,
it was a systematic decision,” said David Asher

Veteran U.S. illicit finance
expert sent from Pentagon to Project Cassandra to attack the alleged Hezbollah
criminal enterprise., who helped establish and oversee Project Cassandra as a
Defense Department illicit finance analyst. “They serially ripped apart this
entire effort that was very well supported and resourced, and it was done from
the top down.”

The untold story of Project
Cassandra illustrates the immense difficulty in mapping and countering illicit
networks in an age where global terrorism, drug trafficking and organized crime
have merged, but also the extent to which competing agendas among government
agencies — and shifting priorities at the highest levels — can set back years
of progress.

WASHINGTON, Dec. 19, 2017 —
It’s the holidays, and millions of Americans are making their way to visit
family and friends.

And many of those travelers
are military personnel returning home from their duty stations.

But hundreds of thousands of
military personnel will not be traveling. They will be continuing to protect
the United States. And they are based around the globe.

Threats Don’t Take a Holiday

Many American service members
must stay at their jobs because threats don’t take a holiday.

According to the most recent
statistics available at the Defense Manpower Data Center, there about 1.3
million personnel on active duty, with about 476,000 in the Army; 323,000 Navy;
184,000 Marine Corps; 321,600 Air Force and 41,500 in the Coast Guard. There
are 810,800 in the selected reserves.

Service members serve on all
seven continents -- there is one service member in Antarctica -- and on all the
seas. Military personnel in more than 170 countries.

There are about 13,000 troops
from all service branches in Afghanistan. They are working to train and advise
Afghan forces and supply the fires needed to help defeat the Taliban and terror
groups.

There are 5,200 service
members in Iraq and another 2,000 in Syria. They are working with Iraqi forces
and the Syrian Democratic Forces to rid the region of the Islamic State of Iraq
and Syria.

There are roughly 28,000
service members in South Korea, deterring North Korean leader Kim Jong Un.

Overall, there are more than
60,000 U.S. service members in the U.S. Central Command area of operations and
aboard ships.

There are 710 U.S. troops in
Kosovo.

Djibouti -- on the Horn of
Africa -- hosts 3,100 American service members, and there are 505 service
members in Niger.

There are 34,300 service
members in Germany, 8,300 in the United Kingdom and 44,500 in Japan. Those
troops’ presence reassures allies and deters competitors.

These are just some of where
active duty personnel deployed this holiday season. They are joined by National
Guard and Reserve personnel.

There are almost 20,000
National Guardsmen serving alongside their active duty brothers and sisters.
They are operating far from their homes in some of the most dangerous areas on
Earth.

Guardsmen are also helping
their fellow citizens more directly with almost 5,000 battling wildfires in
California or delivering supplies in Puerto Rico. And if the call comes on
Christmas morning to help their fellow citizens, they will put down the coffee
and put on the uniform.

From its the Navy has been an
expeditionary force. Sailors will man their ships from the Persian Gulf to the
Gulf of Mexico. Navy officials maintain that roughly a third of the Navy is
deployed at any one time. By that measurement, it means more than 100,000
sailors and Marines are afloat on Christmas.

Sailors are performing
missions that cannot stop for the holidays. Christmas is just another day for
sailors manning their posts aboard submarines with nuclear weapons. Sailors
launching aircraft from the USS Theodore Roosevelt in the Persian Gulf may have
time for Christmas services.

The same holds true for Air
Force missileers and airmen who will be in the silos, by the planes and in the
command centers ensuring the nuclear system is ready if needed.

Monitoring Cyber, Space

U.S. Cyber Command personnel
will monitor the cyber world for threats, and service members will scan space
to ensure those assets are not threatened.

Even all these far-flung
areas, service members will take time to remember the holidays. Dining
facilities do their best to ensure every service member has a great holiday
meal. Centers work overtime to help service members contact loved ones back
home. At some places, there will be sporting matches and perhaps the troops may
get a bit more rack time.

But this is the way it has
always been. The military is always on duty and has been from Valley Forge in
1778 to Fredericksburg in 1862, from Bastogne in 1944 to Chosin in 1950, and
from Linebacker 2 in 1972 to today.

The bottom line is the U.S.
military stands guard so the world can know -- or hope for -- peace.

Note: In the above Air Force photo taken by Staff Sgt. Katherine Spessa, members of the 455th
Expeditionary Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron participate in a white elephant
gift exchange on Dec. 25, 2016 at Bagram Airfield, Afghanistan.

PaulDavisOnCrime@aol.com

Paul Davis is a writer who covers crime. He has written extensively about organized crime, street crime, sex crime, cyber crime, drug crime, white collar crime, crime fiction, crime prevention, espionage and terrorism. He is an online columnist and contributing editor to The Journal of Counterterrorism & Homeland Security International and a regular contributor to the Washington Times. His work has also appeared in the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Philadelphia Daily News and other print and online publications. Paul Davis has been a student of crime since he was a 12-year-old aspiring writer growing up in South Philadelphia. He enlisted in the U.S. Navy when he was 17 in 1970 and served on the aircraft carrier USS Kitty Hawk during the Vietnam War. He also served two years on the Navy harbor tugboat USS Saugus at the U.S. nuclear submarine base at Holy Loch, Scotland. He went on to do security work as a Defense Department civilian employee and then became a freelance writer. You can read Paul Davis' Crime Beat columns, crime fiction and magazine and newspaper pieces on this website. You can also read his full bio by clicking on the above photo.